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When Life Moves as Fast as the News Cycle

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I am often astonished at how much less I write here than I used to, and for a while, I attributed it to the speed of life. There have been so many changes – substantive changes – in my life in the last two years that I can barely keep up.

For a while, I was trying to peg some freelance writing work to the news cycle – writing about depression when Kate Spade was discovered to have committed suicide and realizing that by the time I wrote my piece it was Anthony Bourdain that was in the news and by the time I heard back from an editor, the world was talking about North Korea and then the next school shooting and then family separations at the border.

Funny how much that felt like my life.

Separation after 23 years of marriage followed by (or in the midst of) my oldest daughter’s senior year in high school with the attendant college preparation/final Homecoming/Prom/graduation. Searching for an alternative to the youngest daughter’s school and finding the Running Start program that allows her to enroll in community college in lieu of finishing at her high school followed by divorce and moving to a new home. Watching my mom descend further in to herself and trying to help arrange for her move to a long-term facility and preparing to help my daughter now move across the country for college.

The speed of life.

As I walked the dogs in the cool mist this morning, I realized that part of what has been weighing on me is a feeling of failure – that I am doing so many things and none of them very well. I’ve sold some writing, but not enough to live on. I bought a new house and there are still pieces of furniture where I don’t want them and the outdoor space isn’t as inviting as I want it to be. I don’t cook as often as I used to and I am afraid I’m not showing up for my girls in the way they want me to.

But when I took a moment to really say those words in my own head – to bring them out of the shadows where they play havoc with my heart – I realized that I’ve actually done a pretty damn good job in the last two years simply by putting one foot in front of the other. The fact that I’ve sold any writing, finished my manuscript, bought and sold a house, navigated the end of a decades-long marriage, and managed to stay upright and kind and tell my girls every damn day that I love them is almost a miracle. If I’ve failed in any way, it was a failure to accurately assess what my future was going to look like, and I think it’s a human trait to be pretty bad at that kind of prediction, isn’t it? By making an effort to stay grounded in who I am and what’s important to me and focusing on the next best step, I’ve strung together quite a path thus far, so while the news cycle of my life is still hurtling along at a fairly fast clip, I know it won’t always be like this. I’m just going to hold on and keep doing what I’ve been doing for the next little while and believe in my own abilities.

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When The Story Gets Too Heavy

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Naturvetenskap 1

I am a storyteller and I have been my whole life. I carry them inside me, work on them, figure out the best way to share them. But sometimes the stories get heavy. Before I ever put anything on the page, the words and feelings chase each other around and around inside, making connections and trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. When I sit too long with the stories, they start to burn and I know it’s time to walk or go pull weeds. Somehow, being outside helps the sentences flow and combine in ways they can’t when I am indoors.

The stories of the last year and a half are heavier than many that have gone before, and I’m finding that walking takes on a new urgency for me and it also requires a focus I haven’t been forced to have before. These days, I have to walk farther away from home and immerse myself in places that are new and expansive in order to divorce myself from the circling thoughts and feelings. I have found an open space surrounded by trees where few people go and at least once a week I walk there and sit and untether the words from each other, and also from my head and heart. Sitting in this place just breathing helps to re-string it all in a way that offers clarity.

I am learning that there is a sort of chemical reaction taking place as I assimilate the stories and try to keep my heart and my head on the same level. Most days, the two are at war, fighting for supremacy, which sometimes means wild swings from sadness to anger. My brain can only witness so much grief before it burns it off with anger, like alcohol in a skillet. My heart is simultaneously relieved of its burden and seduced by the beautiful flames, but the anger is also expansive and  at some point I realize it is taking up too much space in my head. The sadness dissipated, but the stories are still there and they are all about other people. I imagine a large section of my brain colonized by the stories of others, the actions of others, the words of others, and I am impatient to evict them.

When I was in college, the days I spent in the Chemistry lab were some of my favorites. The cool, cave-like room with its expanse of concrete worktops and glass beakers and pipettes and orderly rhythms gave me a stillness and a focus. There were rules, a set of steps to be taken, and all that was asked of me was to do one thing at a time and remain curious – observe and report. Even if I knew what I was supposed to be creating, somehow the cascading chemical reactions along the way were always enchanting – sometimes it was a smell or a particular color flame that I hadn’t expected. Witnessing the magic kept me from getting caught up in the story or the sequence. I had my instructions. Observe and report. Remain curious.

 

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Unlearning

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The last year or so has been a challenging one. I am getting a divorce after 23 years and there is a lot to learn, and even more to un-learn; about the world, about myself, about relationships. I have been thinking a lot about “groundwork” and how I believed for a long time in a paradigm that said if I worked hard and diligently and laid a solid ground beneath my feet, at some point I could rest easy and revel in that. It’s that same story we hear in the West about getting to retirement or busting our asses in high school so that we can get in to a good college or killing ourselves in college so that we can land a good job and … rest.

I am un-learning.

I am reminded that people who embody their purpose and their passion, who trust their instincts and intuition and forge a path from that, centered in it, steeped in it, are the people who most inspire me. These people don’t lead with fear, they live with it, walk with it until it falls away. It is, at most, an occasional companion on their journey, not the engine that drives their motion.

I wanted, at some point, to stop living moment by moment, breathing deeply and re-centering myself. I wanted to have built a solid path already so that I wouldn’t have to keep laying one cobblestone at a time, breathing always, focused always. I wanted there to be some magical point in time when I would have laid enough “groundwork” that the path would simply be there, shining and solid before me, so that all I had to do was step out and follow it with ease.

As I say that out loud, I realize that the only way that can happen is if I go backwards. The path in front of me hasn’t been laid yet. It can only be laid by me.

Some days, I want to lie down on the path I’ve already made, at the place where the last cobblestone is set before dropping off into Earth, and rest. And I think that’s ok. Rest is ok. This is hard work, laying your own path, staying grounded in who you are and being true to your own deepest pull.

If I am to forge my own way, I have to keep building one stone at a time. I have to keep asking, ‘is this who I am?’ I have to believe that what lies behind me is only important because it is how I got here. It is not worth going back to.

So while I don’t know exactly where I am going, I know that I am getting there one brick at a time and I also know that each brick is laid with care and determination. The point is not to get “Somewhere” or to “Finish” or even to look back and show how far I’ve come. The work is the point. The daily inquiry – what is most important and true today? what is the highest and best expression of my Self? what is the next right step?

If I embody those things, the work is centering and grounding and I am grateful for it.

Suddenly, I have no more longing for a clear path ahead. I know that what I’m creating is its own purpose, and that gives me joy. And I know that all around me is an abundance of materials and support, reverence and love, and that if I can remember that I am part of something bigger that sustains me and to which I am responsible, in the moments when I falter, I am held firmly.

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Losing My Brother


(Alternately titled “The Fourth, Part Two). Here is part one of this story.

After a year, Cameron is taken away. All of the new clothes my parents have bought him are packed away in the small suitcase he came with and he walks solemnly behind some woman out the front door of our house. His smile is gone, but it hasn’t been around as much lately, anyway. His head is down, looking at the orange shag carpet in the living room and he doesn’t turn around to say good-bye. I can’t say anything. I can’t breathe. I follow them onto the grey cement steps of our porch and hold on to the black iron rail so I won’t sit down hard.

I watch the door of the white van shut and the lady get in the front seat. The van sat in our driveway, engine chugging the entire time. Someone knew he would be packed already. Someone knew he would be ready to go when they got here. I can see Cameron’s one cloudy eye watching me. I can feel the thick ball in my throat as the van backs up into the street. I watch the smoke from the back of the van curl up past his window and make it hard to see him anymore. I can’t look. I have to close my eyes. I can’t go inside. I’m just standing here in the springtime sunshine feeling cold and little.

Finally someone tells me to come inside.

“Can I write him letters?” I ask my mother and my voice sounds high and whiny. She shakes her head and her eyes are full of tears.

I don’t understand. My big brother shrugs his shoulders to say he doesn’t know anything, either. My sister is too little to know anything. All I know is that Dad didn’t like Cameron very much and now he’s gone. Dad doesn’t like my little sister very much, either. And he is trying all the time to make my brother tougher. He was really pissed that Cameron could play soccer better than my brother could. Dad’s the coach and his own son ought to be the star player.

It takes a while but the cold ball in my throat finally settles in my stomach. I’d better be really good from now on.

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This was the “scene” from my perspective as an eight-year old girl who knew that something was wrong. I knew that my parents were fighting a lot and things were not easy at home. Mom was unhappy and the kids were all walking on eggshells. This incident proved to me that it wouldn’t take much for our family to simply disintegrate. Indeed, it was shortly after this that my father moved out and they announced they were getting a divorce, although I don’t recall any of the specifics. Within six months, my father had accepted a job transfer in another state and I was even more certain that, one by one, we would all be picked off, our ties as family members dissolving as easily as the translucent rice paper wrapper on that Chinese candy we got at the store sometimes. From that moment on, I made it my mission to keep my brother and sister as close to me as possible and never do anything wrong. I didn’t want to be next.

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Divorce is Not a Dirty Word


In the last year, several of the women I know – some as acquaintances and others as close friends – have either separated from their husbands or begun divorce proceedings. One night as I snuggled up to Bubba on the couch after he beat me (again) at Scrabble, I said, “Seems like everyone we know is getting divorced.” I was trying to sound casual, but really, I was shocked. Bubba and I have been married for 17 years. Most of our friends have been married as long and have kids, stable jobs, and own houses. Every time I heard of someone in our social circle having relationship challenges, my mind would begin firing from all corners, desperately trying to make connections that would convince me Bubba and I are immune to similar issues. It was very much the same process I went through as a teenager when a parent or teacher would tell the story of someone my age who got pregnant/overdosed on illegal drugs/wrecked their car. “Not me, and here’s why,” my brain would assure me with as many bullet points as it took to bring my heart rate and hyperventilation under control.

As a child of divorced parents, I always wanted to make it about the Worst Case Scenario. Well, they got divorced because there was abuse or someone cheated. I’ll never marry someone who could do that to me, right? Of course, that forced me to confront all sorts of things about my parents that I didn’t particularly want to think about, such as: how could they not know what the other person was like when they got married, or how could one of them treat the other one so poorly, etc.

A few months ago I was having lunch with a friend who was getting divorced after 17 years of marriage. The couple has three children and she and her husband are bending over backwards to make sure that the kids remain front and center in their lives. Theirs will be an amicable divorce. But that doesn’t spare either of them from the stigma and judgment offered from friends, family, and society-at-large. Those who think they are intimate enough ask for details – why? I suspect that it is less out of some sense of voyeurism than a desire to then perform the mental machinations that result in, “Whew! That’s why this couldn’t be me.” Those who don’t outright ask for details either assume answers or sneak about to discover them. This friend of mine said that one of her closest girlfriends, upon learning that the couple was divorcing, said to her, “Congratulations on 17 years of marriage. You guys had a good run and produced some damn fine kids.”

Whoa. Cool. She’s absolutely right.

It’s none of my damn business why anyone else’s relationship ends. Unless one party is a victim of the other one and is asking for my help, I don’t even want to know. Honestly, when I look back at my own life and realize what a completely different person I am now as compared to when I got married, it’s a wonder I haven’t had to change my name to reflect the metamorphosis I’ve gone through. And it’s the same for everyone.

How many of us knew beyond the shadow of a doubt what we wanted to be “when we grew up” at the age of 10? I did. A pediatrician. Or a teacher. Am I either of those things? Not remotely. Who knew what they wanted to be when they declared a college major? I did. A family practitioner in some small, rural podunk town on the West Coast. Am I there yet? No, thank goodness.

There are some fundamental things that have remained steady in my life since I was young; my love for animals and nature, my sense of justice, my idealism, and my constant search for knowledge. But my taste in food, clothing (thank God – I had the 80s rocker-chick hair and parachute pants), books, and nearly everything else has evolved. When I married Bubba, I was certain of a few, core things – I was going to medical school, I was never going to have children, and we would be married until the day we died. Didn’t make it to medical school after spending a few years working as a surgical assistant. That was a game-changer during the first days of healthcare reform a la HMOs. Lasted six years of marriage before waking up one day and feeling a yearning to be a mother so strongly that I couldn’t think of anything else. As for my marriage, it is strong and healthy and I still hope that we will stay together forever, but I’m not making any bets.

People change. There is no such thing as “grown up.” The reasons we fall in love with someone and get married are often perfectly “right” at the time. And over time we learn and evolve and grow. And our partners do, too. But we don’t always do this in syncronicity.

The divorce rates in the United States went up sharply from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s. They have since leveled off some, and even dropped a bit after 2000. I don’t claim to know the reasons for this, but I do know that as long as marriage is around, divorce will be around, too. According to a website called Divorce Guide, these are the top 10 reasons people get divorced:

1. Infidelity
2. Lack of communication
3. Abuse (emotional/physical/sexual)
4. Money issues
5. Sexual incompatibility
6. Religious/cultural differences
7. Boredom
8. Parenting issues
9. Addiction issues
10. Priority differences

I’m pretty sure that the entire list could be boiled down to two things – communication issues and priority differences. And the fact is, those are the things that change most within individuals over time. When we are in our 20s, most of us are beginning to figure out how to communicate effectively with others. Introduce children to the mix and you start all over again. As for priorities, mine shift slightly with every new life experience I have. When I think about it this way, I begin to understand fully why my friend’s girlfriend said what she did. It is hard work to maintain relationships with people. And choosing to end a relationship is always hard, regardless of whether it is a co-worker, close friend or partner. But sometimes it is necessary. So instead of feeling sad for my friends who are getting divorced, I choose to compliment them on their success in navigating the tricky waters of marriage for as long as they were able, and support them in their efforts to find happiness in their lives as they move forward.

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